My Mother's Hands

an ode to my mother

Back in March of this year, my mother turned 65. Being the youngest of four children means stories get lost, memories change, and the past is often forgotten. This was my way of telling her: I see you. I hope that it will resonate with you in some way.

I have my mother’s hands.

Thick veins line the tops like the roots of a tree, twisting and twining. Tracing, tracing the tunnels of your lifeblood with the tips of my chubby childhood fingers. Ten small nailbeds at the ends of ten short fingers, the knuckles thicker than the rest making jewelry an irritating task. Yours are soft with the diligence of moisturizing while mine are tough after only half of the years that you have lived. They are roughly the same size despite our difference in height, palm to palm and tip to tip, like pieces of fruit you plucked from your own wrists and placed on me as if to say “please, have something of mine”. I may have adorned my own with tattoos and they may have once glittered with two-inch acrylics but as time etches ever forward, it is your hands I see in everything that I do.

 I have my mother’s hands but I don’t know how I got them. Memories of the old house ripple in my periphery. Only four years old, only moving just up the road. When two children became four the walls suddenly felt closer, the rooms that much smaller. If I think hard enough, squeeze my eyes shut and mute the world, I can envision that first house: warm color envelops me in stark contrast to our family home now with its bright whites and endless windows, tight shared bedrooms, fights that lead to make ups and bricks, lots of bricks. I’m weightless for a moment, visualizing the time I went tumbling down the carpeted stairs, burns raising on my elbows. I shake my head, the trance temporarily broken. Was that me? Or one of my sisters?

It was the most you and my father could afford as young parents, I’m sure. I still picture you turning each other in circles, blindfolded and reaching out unsteady hands to pinpoint the map. I imagine no other way you could have chosen the small town I grew up in. My city-raised parents, now a suburb-dwelling family. I think harder and squeeze tighter but nothing comes. I envy those who can remember their childhoods with ease. That’s the trouble with being the youngest of four: stories told to me over the years turn into memories that I have not made myself.

I have my mother’s hands but I have no ring on my finger. I am in love and I am happy. Those official things, the expensive ceremonies, they never mattered much to me. Still, I would fawn over your wedding pictures any chance I could get. One wedding planned, then the next and the next. Three years of weddings, three siblings a husband or wives. It was at this point the secrets started to be revealed about your own day of what should have been wedded bliss. I hope that it still was, that despite the growing baby in your belly and the disapproval of both sides of the family you were still able to enjoy your day as a bride. Your flowing white gown hiding the bud of your love for my father, nary a picture taken from the waist down. Three short months as a wife until you were also made a mother.

I have my mother’s hands but my hands have not yet mothered. They won’t, I know. I wonder if this disappoints you. I don’t have the instinct all women seemingly possess; that need to nurture and grow a being in your likeness is not within me. I could never do what you do, could never imagine where to start. Eyes shut once again, this memory I at least know I am creating for myself. Your smooth, unlined hands holding my brother for the first time. You were so young, barely out of your teens and raising a child of your own. I know it couldn’t have been easy. Were you scared? Did you hold on for dear life, vowing to protect him with every fiber of your being? Does a small part of you want to hold on even tighter now knowing that he is your eldest and only son?

I wasn’t there. Not even a thought, not even a consideration. My surprise arrival would come eleven years later, long after your hands left my brother’s soft newborn cheeks. I have my mother’s hands but my brother has your face. The caramel coloring you have all year round, the coarse texture of your hair, your small eyes and warm smile. My paternal grandmother’s words sting me even now but they must have felt life a knife to you then.

“He better not turn out like that.” A reference to your half-brother who came to visit with you. His complexion is deeper than your own, a trait assumed from his father whom I have never met. It was as though the words turned from a curse to a wish for when my brother entered this world, he looked exactly like you.

A little over a year later and you welcomed my big sister home. Whenever I mention the age gap between my oldest siblings and I, the usual response is “so different dads?” I would laugh and utter something along the lines of “happy accidents” as if that said it all. I don’t know exactly what caused the years between us but I know that you loved us all equally yet in different ways. My brother and eldest sister may disagree with this sentiment because according to them, my second oldest sister and I had it far easier than they did. But you and my father were always strict but fair. You made it your mission in life to give us everything the two of you didn’t have and for that I am forever grateful. I know there are things you gave up, dreams you put off in order to raise your family. Your college education, your youth, your future open and expansive to the point of infinity, now a pin hole of light. You gave us everything you could, even if it meant losing pieces of yourself.

I have my mother’s hands but I have my father’s face. Thirty-two years of examining myself in the mirror and it is his I see staring back at me. Sometimes I see your nose or when I turn one side of my mouth up just so there is a resemblance but it is my defining features that belong to him. My light eyes, my elongated head, my bad teeth and average height are products of his European descent, even my short temper can be traced back to the genetic pool of my white ancestors. It’s a strange thing to parcel off your features and attribute them to someone else but as age wears down the layers of youth, I see more and more of him in me every day.

You raised us close to my father’s side, not a fault just a fact. Most of yours were back in Puerto Rico, a place I long to see. Cousins and aunts, uncles and those that took the title without blood. Do I look like any of them? Do we share a face? It’s been decades since you’ve returned but I hope when that day comes that I can be there alongside you. For now I will hold on to the image of a younger you, browned by the sun and surrounded by a flock of chickens, chasing goats up the grassy hills with the biggest smile on your face.

I have my mother’s hands but I am not a good cook. Pasteles, arroz con gandules, platanos fritos dripping in garlic infused olive oil. These are the tastes on my tongue as I imagine your cooking. Now I won’t discredit my father as we both know he can cook it up in the kitchen with the best of them. Family holidays are punctuated by the blending of foods: Yorkshire pudding and roast beef next to heaps of rice and beans and a glass of coquito for dessert. You learned your culinary mastery from your mother and as her mind fades and memories fail, I fear they will be lost forever. This is my official request to sit down with you and record the recipes of your lives. I may not have children to pass them down to but I will have a part of you both forever.

I have my mother’s hands but I can’t speak her language. Seven years of Spanish classes and nothing to show for it. I was a no sabe kid without even knowing what that was. I used to be upset with you for not speaking it to us when we were younger. I assumed it would have been easy to have one English speaking parent and one Spanish. I didn’t consider that you wouldn’t feel comfortable speaking your language, that somehow it was taboo in our house because if we’re being honest, racism comes in all different colors. Your mother-in-law, my grandmother, my namesake. I only remember the good things about her. I never considered if she was cruel to you or if she welcomed you as her only daughter with open arms. Even as her health failed, draining away in our very home, you still cared for her like you would anyone else. I want you to know that you deserved more than a deathbed apology.

I have my mother’s hands but I don’t have her patience. If there is one trait of yours I wish to have, it is this. Not only have your hands raised four incredible children, but they have also spent years caring for others. For as long as I can remember you have dedicated your time to helping adults with disabilities. Working overnights, long shifts, bad pay. You taught me to never see them as “different” or “unintelligent”. The r-word was strictly forbidden in our house and to this day I feel a wave of anger whenever it is uttered. Sometimes you came home bruised; a product of a five-foot woman going toe to toe with a grown man. You never seemed angry; you never blamed them. You fought with the powers that be for them to have more opportunities, more staff, more support. I know this drained you. It’s like fighting against a wave: the more you try the deeper you go.

After years of giving with so little in return, programs shut down, funding was cut, the doors were locked. An all too common occurrence when it comes to the care of underprivileged and unrepresented people. I hope that you know you were a voice for them when no one else would be.

But this loss wouldn’t stop you. Your love only grew.

I remember the first day you brought your dependent home. I was in my early twenties, which I think we can both agree was the peak of my intolerance. I thought it was odd to have a random boy sleeping on our couch, someone who wouldn’t look me in the eye and who spoke very little. It had nothing to do with him. He was a young adult with autism and you were his one-on-one care. But with all of most of my siblings out of the house I felt like an only child who was forced to share their space with a stranger. I want you to know this is on me. I hope I never made him feel unwelcome, or made you feel guilty for having him. I know how lucky I am to have you in my life as my mother and anyone who is gifted even a fraction of that love will tell you the same. The day he graduated out of the program and into a residence I could see the pride blooming on your face as if he was your own child.

I have my mother’s hands and I am afraid. I am so very afraid of losing you. Your mother first came to live with us when she was diagnosed with dementia. We were all scared but most of all you. My little abuelita, once so sweet and tender, turned cruel and combative as the disease took hold of her brain. She was so mean to you and she couldn’t understand why. I can’t begin to comprehend what it must feel like inside of a body that is losing its mind. Still, you did not falter, you did not hesitate. You whisked her off to doctor after doctor, finally getting an answer and a treatment plan that meant we could have our grandmother back. She flourished in our home.

Whether it be a product of her disease or a long dormant talent, she began to paint. Even before her diagnosis her hands would shake so much she could barely write but afterwards her tremors only worsened. It was like watching a miracle happen right before our eyes; how her hands would steady only when she would paint or draw. It wasn’t a miracle, it was you. You took her in when no one else wanted to, you got her the best doctors you could find, you enrolled her in a day program that kept her mind and body active and was the first place she picked up a brush.

It was all because of you.

I am afraid to lose you because time is a thief and I only realized it too late. You are still here; you are still young in body and spirit and thriving by all accounts. But seeing the way my grandmother was robbed of her lucid twilight years I am afraid the same will happen to you. Genetics are beasts that cannot be tamed but I will curse their name anyway. These things come for us one way or the other. It is the one guarantee life has to offer other than death. Every time I see a slight shake to your head or an uncertain movement, I worry. A part of me troubles over my own future self, one that will no longer have you in it if life follows its normal path. I try to say it’s no use, what will come will come and that’s all there is to it. It’s enough for you to have her name, you can’t inherit this too.

You and my father taught me to believe in God. I’m not sure that I do, that I can justify the pain and suffering that occurs every day and reconcile with the fact that it is all for naught. But if there is one thing that I long for, one prayer I would want to reach those ethereal ears, it is that it will skip a generation and leave you to enjoy the last years of your life in blissful clarity, even if that means it will come for me next.

I watch your hands as they dialed the number to the assisted living she was in temporarily, refusing to let a miscalculation in her medication go.

I watch your hands as they feed my abuelita because she can no longer do it on her own.

I watch your hands as they remove the legs of her wheelchair, as they grip the handles and strain to push her through the narrow passageway to the bathroom.

I watch your hands as they comb her hair, just enough left to twine into a clip.

I watch your hands as they tuck her into bed at night, telling her that the scary things she sees in the corner of the room aren’t really there.

I watch your hands now full with the weight of your head, exhausted emotionally and physically with the effort it takes to care for another human every second of the day.

I want to pull your hands in mine and tell you that it will be okay. That we will be there with you until the end. That my hands will become your hands and I will take care of you like you took care of me. Life can be full of regrets but this is one I do not want to have. I want to know you as more than my mother, I want to know you as a person because you are so much more than the vessel that brought my siblings and I into this world.

You are the mother who would take a moment to make the sign of the cross as the squeal of an ambulance speeds past. You are the mother who would wipe away my tears, telling me everything would be alright. You are a mother who is always carrying the weight of someone else on their shoulders even if it crushes you. You are the mother who would weep at the divide that once split my siblings and I, knowing how important it is to keep family close when you were so far from your own. You are the mother who softened the edges of my father who loved us hard but loved you even harder. You are my mother and I have your hands but please know this: you are a woman complete and whole all on your own. These things are a part of you but they do not define you.

You are a mother, a woman, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a paramour, a teacher, a provider, a lover of movies, a master of cooking, a warm hug, a gossip partner, a saint. You are all of these things and so much more. Your hands, your soul and your life have touched countless others but few will know how lucky, how positively blessed it is to be your child.

Thank you for giving me so much more than your hands.